Trueluck Summer
Page 6
“Raffle tickets for what?” Abigail asks, like she might buy one.
Trudy tells her never mind, and the house gets quiet again.
It is amazing how much I overhear in this old house without even wanting to.
Trudy comes outside and lets the screen door slam. My sweat has started a new race, but our lightheartedness from earlier is lost. The cats return as soon as she sits down again.
“My guess is that telephone call wasn’t about raffle tickets,” I say.
“Hoot needs to keep his pimply nose out of my business,” she says.
“What did he say?” I ask.
Trudy picks at a scab on her ankle, and when it starts to bleed I hand her a tissue from the pocket of my skirt.
“He was calling to warn me,” she says. “He said I needed to quit hanging around Paris. That if people get wind of it, it won’t be pretty. And that people already hate Daddy, and that I’m making it worse for him.”
Her eyes tear up. I put an arm around her shoulder and hug her close.
“First of all,” I begin, “you are not making it worse for your father. Ted Junior can take care of himself. If he doesn’t get reelected, it will have nothing to do with you. It is the inevitable backlash that happens throughout time. The world progresses for a while, then like a rubber band, things snap back to the way they were. That has nothing to do with you, Trudy, and everything to do with how the world is set up.”
She takes a deep breath, and I know she has heard me.
“Second of all,” I continue, “the fact that this Hoot knows about Paris means you aren’t being careful enough. I know you want to be Paris’ friend, but you have to think of Paris. The people Hoot is warning you about will blame him instead of you. So you have to protect your friend. I wish this wasn’t the case, but unfortunately it is.”
I pause with the hope that Trudy will give up on taking down that flag. The more I think about it the riskier it feels.
“Is there a third thing?” Trudy raises her head.
“Yes, there is,” I say. “Third of all, I love you very much, and I am here for you whenever you need me.” I squeeze her shoulder in case she has any doubts.
“Does this mean you’ll help us?” she asks.
“You and Vel come to my room later tonight, and we can talk about it,” I say. “I’ll give you my answer then.”
Emotion rises in my throat, a combination of pride, love, and protection. I can’t imagine being twelve years old and dealing with such big issues. All I want is to keep my granddaughter safe. But I also want to encourage her to follow her passion, whatever that might be. Passions are so easy to lose once you get a certain age—though I wonder sometimes if I ever had any. When I think about Ted Senior dying, and my coming to live here with Ted Junior and his family, I have to believe that part of the reason I am here is to encourage Trudy. For that, I would not mind being famous or winning a world record. The big question is if I have the courage to join her. I am not so sure I do.
Chapter Ten
Trudy
After Mama sets her last pie to cool on the counter, she gives me a look like I am a character in an Alfred Hitchcock movie who is guilty of something. She loves Alfred Hitchcock. She can always figure out who committed the crime before everybody else does.
“Please go tell your father I need him in the kitchen,” she tells me.
“But Vel’s coming soon. Tell Teddy to do it.” But I know my brother must have been sent to his room. Otherwise, the house wouldn’t be so quiet.
I think of Hoot Macklehaney again and open the refrigerator and get a sip of orange juice right from the bottle. Mama has told me a million and one times not to do this, but Daddy does it all the time. She aims her dishtowel toward me, but I jump out of the way, and it barely grazes me. That dishtowel has taught me to have quick reflexes.
Mama tells me to go get Daddy again, and I stomp out of the room even though I am not actually upset about it. I don’t see him that much on account of him writing the great American novel and being mayor at the same time.
At the bottom of the steps I check my Barbie watch to time how many seconds it takes to get to the attic. Anything to get my mind off of stupid Hoot Macklehaney and how history is like a rubber band. Twelve seconds is my best time for running up the steps so far, and I am intent on another Trudy Trueluck world record.
As soon as the second-hand reaches the top of Barbie’s head, I take off like a sprinter in the Olympics. Two flights of steps, two stairs at a time. At the top, I check my watch again: twenty-one steps in ten seconds. I smile, having shaved two seconds off my previous time. Daddy will be proud.
When I open the attic door a wall of hot air hits me in the face. An oscillating fan rattles as it throws the heat around. A roll top desk, belonging to my Grandpa Trueluck, sits next to the small window with a view of the street. Ted Trueluck—part-time novelist, full-time mayor of Charleston, South Carolina—sits at the desk. He is dwarfed by the large chair with wooden arms worn from years of his ambition resting against them. The chair has rollers on its feet and swivels. If we crammed in it would be big enough to hold Paris, Vel, and me all at the same time.
Daddy clacks away at the Royal typewriter Mama got him for Christmas the same year I got my Timex. He wears his lucky shorts—an old pair of Bermudas he wears every time he writes, even in winter—and is without a shirt. Since he has never sold a thing he has ever written, I don’t know why they are called his “lucky shorts.” Mama calls Daddy an eternal optimist and says that he gets it from Nana Trueluck.
“How can you stand working up here?” I ask him.
A single lamp sits on the desk-top while the rest of the attic is in shadow.
“An artist must make sacrifices,” he says, all serious. He slows down long enough to turn to look at me and smile. But then he keeps typing.
The attic has the smell of memories. A single window in the eave of the roof shoots squares of moonlight onto the dusty wooden floor highlighting footprints leading to the desk. Old trunks, as well as boxes that are older than I am, line one wall. Lamps without shades share space with chairs with broken legs like a hospital for the past.
On the other side of the attic is a stack of boxes that are Nana Trueluck’s. Next winter she promises to bring me up here to show me things from her past including Daddy’s baby pictures and baby shoes as an only child, and photographs from when she was a girl.
In the past, I played up here in the cooler months. Revisiting toys long since outgrown: an old rocking horse, boxes of building blocks. Toys that at one time I could not bear to part with are now orphaned with the passing of time.
My old crib is stored to the left of the window. It is hard to imagine that I was ever small enough to fit into it. Now it would break into splinters with my weight.
“Is your mother looking for me?” Daddy asks.
“Yes, sir,” I say.
“Let me finish this paragraph.” His fingers rest on the keys as if he is about to play the piano.
I walk over next to him and press my fingerprints into the dust that covers the surface of the desk. The old typewriter begins again as he creates the longest paragraph in the history of words. Or at least it feels that way.
Hoot Macklehaney’s call is still upsetting me, but I don’t want my parents to know. Parents stop a lot of perfectly good adventures in the name of safety, and I’d bet a year’s allowance that they will never agree to us taking down that flag. Nana Trueluck has to agree to it, or I don’t see how we can pull it off. Later tonight, I will tell her what Paris and Vel and I discussed at the cemetery.
I rest an arm on the back of the desk chair and inhale my father’s summertime smell—the remnants of Old Spice and overworked deodorant. Since I fall asleep to the click, click, clicking of the keys nearly every night, the sound of the typewriter makes me yawn.
“Daddy, what’s a person supposed to do if they see something that’s wrong?” I ask.
The heat must be ge
tting to me. I usually don’t ask him these kinds of questions. Or maybe that telephone call from Hoot is still haunting me.
He stops typing, swivels around in his chair and looks over his glasses at me like he has seen plenty of wrongness in his life. “Like what, sweetheart?”
“Like if people are treated badly because of something they can’t help,” I say. “Like the color of their skin.”
He pauses and takes off his glasses. “I think we have to be a part of the solution instead of the problem, and practice the golden rule.”
“But what if it gets you in trouble?” I ask.
He sits back in his chair as if giving his answer extra thought.
“Doing the right thing isn’t always popular, Trudy, and it’s never easy. But I think you have to do it anyway.”
At that moment, Daddy sounds like Nana Trueluck, too. What would he think about our plan to go to Columbia? I have a sneaking suspicion that once he got over being scared for me he’d be proud. Just like I am proud of him for writing this novel even if nobody ever reads it.
I hear Vel’s voice in the kitchen and kiss Daddy on his warm cheek. “Don’t forget Mama wants you.”
He smiles and swivels back around to the typewriter.
I return to the kitchen. Another fan whirls in the corner, moving the humid, fruity air from one side of the room to the other. Nana Trueluck is at the table finishing up her daily crossword puzzle. With every pass, the fan on the countertop blows loose strands of her white hair.
Mama cleans flour off the countertops as she talks to Vel. When Vel sees me, she gives a wide smile and points to the tight blonde curls that now cover her head, compliments of the Toni perm. I swallow a gasp.
“Tell me the truth. Is it hideous?” she asks me.
In the South we are taught to spare people the truth, especially if it guarantees to end a friendship. I avert my eyes to the disaster that sits on her head. A compliment is called for, and I search my brain for one.
How do I tell my best friend that she looks more like a poodle than the unfortunate alligator-eaten Chester ever did? In fact, I should warn her to stay away from the marsh or she might be that gator’s next victim.
“Your hair is . . . unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” I say finally.
Nana Trueluck looks up from her crossword as though the next clue is a four-letter word for someone who doesn’t tell the truth.
Vel tests the buoyancy of the curls, apparently pleased. She reeks of Toni perm, and the smell makes me sneeze. She says, “bless you,” and then pets her perky ringlets again as if they are a new poodle puppy she has brought home from the pound.
Mama gives us each a peach turnover made from the leftover filling from her pie and a tall glass of milk. Vel sits across from me at the kitchen table, and I try my level best not to stare at her head. Nana Trueluck gives my leg another nudge under the table to remind me to be kind. Meanwhile Mama hovers in the background with her dishtowel poised in case I take a notion to tell the truth about Vel’s hair. But I already know better.
“I hope this heat doesn’t destroy my perm,” Vel gives her curls another pet.
If a dog catcher shows up I will be out one best friend. Loud footsteps descend the stairs—too loud for Daddy, unless he has suddenly taken up stomping.
Teddy, who I prefer to forget exists, speeds into the room. Before I can stop him, he takes the last bite of my turnover. I yell, and Mama tells him to go back to bed. He starts to finish the last of my milk but stops mid-gulp.
He gives Vel’s head the once-over and swallows. “Jiminy Cricket!” Teddy says.
“Come on, Vel, let’s go to my room,” I say before he has a chance to say more. She agrees and follows me out of the kitchen, her curls swirling like a hula-hoop.
Teddy follows us into the hallway and stares at Vel’s hair like he wonders what breed of dog it is. With a look, I warn him not to say a word. Meanwhile, Teddy mounts the bottom rail of the staircase like it is a wild bull in a rodeo, throwing up his arm in a dramatic arc. I grab his shirt to pull him off, causing him to exaggerate a fall and tumble into a heap on the wooden floor.
When he grows up, Teddy wants to be a stunt man in Hollywood. At six years of age, he is already an expert at falling. As a result of his constant practice, he has an impressive number of bruises of various shapes and sizes that cover every exposed area of his skin. When he heard about my incident with the Sunbeam Bread truck, he was envious of the experience and asked to go with me next time when I deliver one of Mama’s pies.
Mama shows up and swats the back of Teddy’s leg with her dishtowel to signal that this time she means business. He scrambles up the stairs like King Kong is chasing him to the top of the Empire State Building.
Vel has a brother, too. He is older and wants to be a horse vet someday. This makes a lot more sense to me than becoming a stuntman. I wonder if Paris and Teddy might get along since they both want to go into the movie business—unless Paris decides to follow in the footsteps of Dr. King instead.
At the top of the landing, Teddy pretends to crash against the banister and then bounces across the landing and hits the wall with a dull thud like in the old cowboy westerns. He does this every few steps until he finally lands in a heap in front of his door. His tongue hangs to one side of his mouth, a stricken look on his face. Vel and I step over him.
Once we get to my room, I shove my window open as wide as it will go to let in fresh air. This time of day you can smell the ocean if the breeze comes from the east. Unfortunately, it hasn’t cooled down much yet.
Typing sounds come from the attic and the theme song of The Dick Van Dyke Show wafts up from the living room. Nana Trueluck never misses an episode. She loves Mary Tyler Moore, who plays Laura Petrie, and loves it when she says, “Oh, Rob,” in that exasperated way that she does. If Vel wasn’t here, I’d be watching with her.
Vel sits on my bed, and I force myself to think of serious things so I won’t laugh at her hair.
“Hoot Macklehaney called here tonight,” I say.
“Hoot called your house?”
Vel’s wide eyes and her permed hair make her look like a poodle struck by lightning. I hide my laugh inside a cough.
“How’d he find your number?” she asks.
“We’re the only Truelucks in the old telephone book,” I answer. I don’t mention to Vel that we aren’t listed in the new telephone book because Daddy kept getting so many mean calls.
“Well, what did Hoot say?”
“He warned me again to quit hanging around with Paris.”
Vel twists her curls. “I know he saved your life,” she says, “but that doesn’t mean you have to hang out together.”
“Nobody saw us, Vel. It was a secret meeting, remember?”
“Hoot saw it.”
I pause, thinking about what Nana Trueluck said about me being more careful. Even though nobody saw us along the marsh road, I did step up to defend Paris at the Esso station.
“It must be weird to be chocolate cake among all this vanilla,” I say.
“Vanilla goes best with vanilla, Trudy, and chocolate goes best with chocolate. You’re not supposed to mix them.”
“That sounds boring,” I say.
Vel pulls two pieces of Bazooka bubble gum from her shorts pocket and tosses me one. “I still can’t believe that stupid jerk spit at us yesterday,” she says.
“Don’t forget that rebel flag he waved in our faces like it was a gun or something.”
“What is it with that flag?” Vel asks. “I don’t understand why it’s so important to people.”
“Nana Trueluck says it’s because we lost the Civil War, and Union troops burned down Atlanta and a bunch of other places to rub it in. She says hanging onto that flag is a way to hang onto pride for some folks.”
“Your nana sure does have a lot to say about things,” Vel says, petting her hair again. “My grandmother doesn’t talk about anything interesting. She just wears smelly perfume.”
“We need to take down that flag for Paris, Vel. If it was the other way around, I bet he would do it for us,” I say.
Vel pauses as if having a hard time imagining it the other way around. Then she takes a book from her pink purse and puts it on my nightstand. I guess it is in case she gets the urge to read in the middle of the night.
“So why would we take something down that helps folks hang onto some pride?” she asks.
“It’s more complicated than that,” I say. “By the way, I think this bubble gum has been around since the Civil War, too.”
“I think you’re right.” Vel holds her jaw while she chews, and her curls tremble with every bite.
I think about Vel’s question. “Maybe pride isn’t good if it makes one set of people think they’re better than another set of people, or if they use it to boss them around.”
I give up on the gum and toss it into my metal trash can. It makes a loud thud. But I am not willing to give up on Vel yet. We’ve been best friends forever for a reason, even if I can’t remember that reason right now.
“People will know we’re up to something if Paris is with us.” She spits her gum out, too.
“He won’t be with us,” I say. “Not really. He’ll have to tag along like he did this morning, or we’ll draw attention to ourselves. Unless Nana Trueluck has a better idea.”
I suggest we go talk to her, and Vel follows me down the hall. We find Nana Trueluck on her bed rubbing Jergens lotion into her hands. She wears a white night-gown that looks too hot for summer, but as she has told me before, old people tend to run cold. Nana’s bed is an antique and was evidently made for very tall people because it requires a jump to get on it. Vel’s hair bounces higher than she does.
Nana Trueluck’s white hair is down and draped over her shoulders. In a way she looks beautiful. She motions for me to give her my hands so she can rub the excess Jergens from hers to mine.